Jet Planes

Jet Planes

Jet plane, flying so high.

Magnificent streak across the sky.

Leaving a trail, white on blue.

For just a brief moment It feels so true.

I want to feel strong, important, and fast,

but just how long will that image last?

The plane is gone, its trail will fade

Like the grass that withers,

every blade.

There go I, but for God's grace,

leaving clear blue sky without a trace...

That is not an empty sky you see above,

it is filled with promise, 

God's steadfast love.

I don't need my image etched across His space, 

better to be engulfed, 

and to see His face. 

Psalm 103:15-17

Hmmm, so that’s how it feels...

...incline our hearts to walk in Your ways, 

grant that having cheerfully done Your will this day

we may when night comes, 

rejoice and give You thanks.

-Morning Prayers-

So I walked again today.  Everything was more colorful and more beautiful than yesterday, because the sun was out. Today Ben, my neighbor’s obsessive compulsive Chesapeake retriever, flushed a turkey from behind a tree making us both jump.  Quiet and graceful is not how one would describe a spooked turkey in flight, by the way.  Yes, I walked, but I walked alone today.  My sweet granddaughter decided she was too busy, or just not interested enough to make the effort to walk with Papa today.  She was sorry she missed the turkey, however.

I could probably have made her come, her Mom would have thought it was a good idea and all.  Or, I might have manipulated her into coming by promising a treat or by guilt tripping her about making me walk by myself.  She might have come, but it wouldn’t have been the same.  If I had forced her or manipulated her into coming she would have sulked and been heavy footed and slow.  The lilt in her step, the joy that was in her face yesterday when she found the turtle would have been gone.  We would have walked together, but we would not not have been together.  It might have looked the same from the outside, but it would have felt very different on the inside.  So, while walking alone is not ideal it is not as unpleasant as walking with one who is under duress.

God is like that, you know.  He deeply desires us to walk with and to be with Him, but He wants us there out of desire and not duress.  By design we are made to be drawn, not pushed.  Relationship is by nature desire driven or it is not relationship at all.  Can He make me be present with Him? Yes, He is all powerful.  Can He make me be present to Him?  Good question...I don’t believe He can without violating my humanity as one made in His image.  That is the nature of desire, it cannot be forced it can only be invited.  Ahh, and that He does, He entices, invites, pursues, and faithfully desires our relationship with me.  How can I resist that, why would I even want to?  

Having said all that, the truth is there are many days when, like my granddaughter, I am too busy or just not inclined to walk with Him. I suspect I miss more than wild turkeys because of weak desire.

Thomas Merton has a prayer that has been of great comfort to me.  Very loosely quoted  it goes something like this, “God, the truth is that much of the time I don’t want You, but, at my core I want to want You, and I know that even my wanting to want you pleases You...”  So I pray the morning prayers, “Father incline my heart to walk in Your ways...” and every now and then, usually when I least expect it, I feel a little shift deep inside of me and I find myself moving from wanting to want to, to actually wanting to, “...and when night comes I rejoice and give thanks.”

I can rationalize my feelings when my granddaughter doesn’t come. I can walk at a faster pace and that is good for my physical heart, but when she doesn’t come and especially doesn’t want to come the loneliness is felt in my heart. 

 Hmm so that is how He feels...to Him?

The field, My granddaughter, and The Prayers

For those of you who have read my blog in the past you know that part of my practice of life includes regular walks in the 85 acres of field and forrest so graciously shared by our neighbor, Bill.  The field is gorgeous in a whole new way now as spring has finally pushed winter aside.  The dogwoods and redbuds splash their color on the tree line, and the wild flowers are beginning to push up through what remains of the winter grass.  The views of the mountains seem to draw you toward them with an irresistible pull.  

It is my custom when I walk to say "The Prayers" as described in Acts 2:42.  The prayers as described in Acts most likely included the Psalms and other prayers for the early Church.  I have found the morning prayer as complied by Robert Benson in Venite, to be helpful to me. These prayers are old and have been prayed through the ages by the Church at regular times of the day and I find that as I discipline myself to pray them, even when I don’t feel like it or am not very attentive, they draw me into His presence.  The “morning prayers” are far less “me” centered and more focused on the One who is, and was, and forever will be.  After many years of reading, “saying”, my prayers each morning I was surprised to discover that they were fixed in my feeble brain and I can say them from memory as I walk... Thanks be to God.

Some of you know that my Son, his wife, and four very energetic grandchildren are staying with us for some weeks as they transition from their time in Guatemala and wait to close on a new house.  Mary Helen has consented to join me as we “go hunting” and walk.  How sweet it is to feel her hand in mine and to watch her alternately run ahead or lag behind as we discover turkey feathers, thus the “hunting for turkeys”, colorful flowers, the red cardinal on the post, or the turtle with yellow splotches on his back.  We agree the turtle must be a Vol fan since he has an orange nose.

The sweetest part has been to have her join me in saying The Prayers.  Truthfully she doesn’t understand much about them and I suspect is only marginally interested at age 6, but she listens as I explain the mystery of joining with the Church world wide in praying The Prayers.  God’s people around the world say these prayers every day on a given hour.  Mary Helen experienced time zones and how it made her time different from ours while she was in Guatemala and I could see her mind working as she tried to wrap her arms around the idea that if some of God’s people pray the Prayers on the same hour each day, as the day unfolds the world, as it turns, is bathed in the prayers of the Church.  How cool is that?  We can be party to all of that when we pray.

It is hard to describe how heart warming it is to say the words, “And now we pray for those with whom we share the journey, those who have been given to us and to whom we have been given...”  Here we pause and say the names of those who make up this circle of fellow travelers as God brings them to mind.  Mary Helen of course named her Daddy and Drew who are still in Guatemala, then remembered the rest of her family name by name, noting with joy on finishing their names that she had just prayed for her whole family.

All that except the turtle, who presented himself today, was the first day. Today as we walked we talked about the opening phrase... God said, “Let there be light,” We talked about gifts, that a gift is not deserved or owed.  If they were deserved or owed they would not be gifts, merely payment of an obligation.  Gifts are freely given and are precisely not an obligation of any kind.  We talked about how “Let there be light,” is a gift of a new day and how good it is of God that He gives another day...then she ran ahead, down the hill, full of glee calling for Papa to hurry.

I continued my prayers aloud as she swirled first ahead and then behind, but she was in step with her hand in mine when we reached, “And now we pray the prayers that Jesus taught those He called brothers and sisters and friends...”  Her sweet voice chimed in as we began, “Our father who is in heaven...”

God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light,

And God saw that the light was good...

It is sooo good!

Thanks be to God!

Why am I cast down...?

Psalm 43:5-8

Why are you cast down, O my soul,

    and why are you in turmoil within me?

Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,

    my salvation and my God.

My soul is cast down within me;

    therefore I remember you

from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,

    from Mount Mizar. 

Deep calls to deep

    at the roar of your waterfalls;

all your breakers and your waves

    have gone over me. 

By day the Lord commands his steadfast love,

    and at night his song is with me,

    a prayer to the God of my life.

So, my traveler friend says as he gazes thoughtfully into the distance, "There is nothing quite like the lights of Singapore on a beautiful spring evening, the lights of Istanbul are probably the most exotic, and the romantic lights of Paris will take your breathe away, but there is nothing as beautiful as the tail lights of my children's minivan as the leave the driveway after a long weekend with the grandkids."

The deep gray black of the sky is split by the light pink, then increasingly intense colors ridged by the the bright orange pushing down on the dark silhouette of the Smokey Mountains.  My grand daughter, Shirley Temple, as her mother calls her, this morning asked if sunset was coming up yet as we took them to the airport long before dawn.  As I watch the beauty of another dawn I wrestle with the conflicting emotions welling up deep inside me.

My son and daughter in law with their four kids, ages 7 and down, flew out this morning after spending a "4 week" Christmas hiatus from their water project in the Ulpan valley of Guatemala with us.  For two "empty nesters" accustomed to our routine and appreciative of our peace and quiet, you can imagine the whiplash of 24/7 rug-rats, toys underfoot, a perpetually full dishwasher, a constant stream of meals and snacks, trips to the playground, visiting the horses, nerf gun fights, star wars movies, and a dryer that never stops running.  Sandwich in a mission trip to Honduras for me and preparing for the sale of Jan's parents home of 50 years into the mix and, well...

I shared my traveler friend's story with several grandparent friends and we have all laughed, I have expected to feel something of that elation myself when those tail lights lit up, especially after the addition of a fifth week due to Shirley Temple's onset of pneumonia and subsequent "forbidden to travel" order from her pediatrician on their scheduled eve of departure.  Each of the other three proceeded to get sick in the ensuing week and I, with great empathy proceeded to join them with a GI flu bug, yes, both ends participating at once, thank you.

But, as I watched them wend their way through security this morning on their way to the gate, I feel more cast down in my soul than elated.  It has been a wonderful, hard, way too busy and out of control few weeks full of airports, cluttered old home places, sometimes whiney kids, warm snuggles, broken Spanish (and English for that matter), tears, intense conversations, sweet little voices that say "Papa" and make your heart melt.  Revisiting Guatemala has been been good and hard, exhilarating and confusing at times.  We have processed and prayed, run and rested, wondered and sometimes wept, and now once again we send them off, four little munchkins, my son and a daughter, thankfully in the arms of the One who is steadfast love and faithfulness.

Am I really down cast, or is it just fatigue? I don't know and it really doesn't matter...I am thankful that even as I write and contemplate the Psalm above, given to me as I watched the sun rise this morning...I can't say that I hear the roar of the waterfall yet or feel the crashing of the breakers...but, somewhere deep inside me there is a wave rising and the smattering of hope that I, and my family will know how much we are loved by the One who is steadfast love and faithfulness.

We serve a wild and amazing God, what a trip!!

Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy!

I'm going to Gamala

“ How old are you Eliza?”

“I’m going to be fwee on my birthday.”

“When is your birthday?”

“When I go to Gamala”

“When are you going to Guatemala?”

“When I’m fwee.”  When I come back I’ll be dwiving.”

“No you won’t you’ll just be four.”

“Oh.”

Last Thursday morning early I put my son, his pretty wife and four of my five grandchildren on a plane to Guatemala, it was Eliza’s birthday.  They were quite a sight lined up at the security check just before they moved out of sight headed for the gate, each with their backpack, and carryon.  They are headed to Guatemala for a year to help design a water system to bring clean water to 16 villages in in the Ulpan valley, coordinate work teams to install the systems, train some of the local men to maintain the systems, and be molded by God in whatever way He sees fit.

Sixty-four years ago my grandparents watched their children pack everything on a boat and set out for Honduras, experiencing, I am sure, the same pride, anxiety, loss, unknowing, and joy that we feel.  When my Mom questioned my son about the whole idea of taking his family to live with no indoor plumbing or electricity for a year he just laughed and said, “Lala, you started all this.”  She was expressing to me her anxiety about where they we going and I pointed out to her, like Mark did, that she had done the same thing and for twenty years, not one.  There was a long pause, and then she said, “You’re right, actually where we lived was worse, but I’m still going to miss them.”

The past five months since they decided to go have been a blur of packing, selling their house, getting supplies, transitioning work,and raising support.  The last two and a half weeks they moved in with us quickly turning our house into a zoo, full of suitcases, piles of clothes, toys, supplies being sorted for here or there, and four grandkids caught up in the swirl of unknowing.  Guatemala to them just a word and a place hard to imagine.  For a couple of empty nesters used to our decidedly slower pace and routines it has been a wild, wooly, and wonderful couple of weeks of intense “quality” time before they left.  

It has been five months full of questions, doubts, fears, excitement, planning, intense activity, prayer, and more emotion than we know what to do with.  All this enveloped with a deep sense of the presence of God, the rightness of what is coming to be and an anticipation of something new. They and we have been surrounded by a wonderful community of folks who have loved and supported us beyond reason.  For this we are humbled and deeply grateful.

Their van is still in our driveway and when I saw it out the window yesterday I found myself listening expectantly for one of my favorite sounds, “Papa!”  Yep, I miss them already.  I’m looking forward to Christmas when they will invade the house again.

Until then, Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy!

He Speaks and the Sound of His Voice...

I attended the memorial service last week of a good friend, Mertie.  She had requested for her funeral a number of the old hymns that I recall from childhood but don’t get to sing much anymore because they are not in the Presbyterian hymnal.  The memorial service led off with a song I used to play on a 45rpm record almost every night as I drifted off to sleep as a child.  I found great comfort in these words as George Beverly Shea would sing them in his deep baritone voice:

I come to the garden alone,

while the dew is still on the roses,

and the voice I hear, falling on my ear,

the Son of God discloses.

And, He walks with me, and He talks with me,

and He tells me I am His own.

And the joy we share as we tarry there,

none other has ever known.

I believe that we come into this world with an ear far more attuned to His voice than we remember as we get older.  My grandson Drew, when he was very young (3ish) was fearful when going to bed one evening.  His Dad, my son Mark, told him that if he was afraid he should talk to Jesus.  Drew soon went quietly to sleep.  Mark asked him the next morning if he had talked to Jesus about His fears, to which Drew responded, “Yes.”  “What did he say?” Mark asked.  “He told me He loved me,” said Drew.

As I grew older and no longer went to sleep listening to my 45 recordings, I was influenced by some who doubt the simplicity of the words of this song and frowned at the thought that God might actually speak directly to me or that I might actually recognize His voice.  A pastor friend once even made fun of the words and scoffed that one could expect to hear His voice.  “God only speaks through His written word,” I was told, and the implication that follows is that what He says will follow a particular theological construct.  I’m afraid that I bought in to this line of thinking for a season and as a result began losing the ability to hear.  Thankfully, the One who speaks was  not intimidated by that assertion and was not inclined to discontinue the conversation or limit Himself to written words and a particular theology, but continued to pursue and to quietly whisper His words in my ear.

I was nearly forty before the hollowness of pure theology and my inadequate attempts to be a good Christian man were intercepted by the persistence of the One who speaks.  I began to learn with and through others (Robert, Jim, Buddy, Harold, Eugene, Phil, Lee, John, I love you guys.) the importance and the joy of silence, solitude, the prayers, Sabbath, and other disciplines for hearing.  I am a slow learner but I am rediscovering the sound of His voice...

He speaks and the sound of His voice,

is so sweet the birds hush their singing.

And the melody, that He gave to me,

within my heart is ringing.

Hardness of hearing does not go away easily and I find that the One who speaks seldom shouts or raises His voice.  Noise and business will invariably drown out any chance of hearing the whisper of His voice.  He is persistent, but He is not intrusive.  He is always present, even when I am not.  He speaks into desire not obligation.

I don’t have a garden like the song describes, but my neighbor has 85 acres of field and woods across the way. (See 8/8/11 post)  He has been gracious to allow me to mow a path around the field where I walk regularly, usually in the cool of the morning. It is quiet except for the birds, the flowers blooming and the mist of the early morning which makes the rays of the rising sun streak as they wind through the trees...

And He walks with me, and He talks with me,

and He tells me I am His own.

And the joy we share as we walk out there,

is as sweet as I have ever known.

The Euro Cup and Worship

The Euro Cup and Worship

I have been watching some of the Euro Cup of late and the TV promo caught my attention.  The clip highlights the passion of the fans for various teams. To pulsating background music images of the costumes, body paint, anthems, cheers, banners, dancing in the streets for the winners, and unashamed tears for the losers, flash across the screen.  A gripping chronicle of people at worship.

We are wondrously and dangerously made because we will worship that which holds our deepest passions.  I have no quarrel with the fans devotion to their teams, I’ve been known to wear orange, scream out of character, and react with joy or depression depending on the outcome of the struggle. But watching the video clip raises the question in my mind...do I worship my Creator with that much passion and abandon. Why or why not?  What does my answer say about my deepest passion?  What would happen to me if I did worship Him that way?

I wonder...?